


Morning Inventory

by May



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Gore, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 15:54:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/May/pseuds/May
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You watch him come back to the tent, covered in both his blood and somebody else's. You know there's some seadweller's head out there, lying on the sand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morning Inventory

The air is cold and the smell of blood is stuck in your nostrils. Seadweller blood, though you don’t know if you’re imagining the scent’s specific tones to highlight it as such. You know Gamzee wrenched his head from his neck and that it’s still out there.

“Sometimes, you all got to be doing what you motherfucking gotta,” he says, quietly, evenly. For you, there was sweeps of training yourself, precisely, and your attacks are well timed slashes with your sickle. Maybe he learned, too, though, maybe it’s some inherent highblood shit. Either way, there’s a lot about Gamzee you haven’t brought yourself to think through, yet.

The dawn light is beginning to stream through the gap in your tent and Gamzee is starting to squint. You quickly zip up the tent’s entrance and feel a yield of relief inside you. All that there is during the day is revenants. They’re dangerous if you’re not alert, but they’re simple creatures and their flesh gives way so easily.

Gamzee is naked, his skin smeared with violet blood and his own, which is seeping from various cuts. You know you’re still wearing your boxers from your feels jam, but he’s one of very few trolls who would wander nonchalantly out into the night without a stitch on. You guess if you spent the first couple of sweeps of your life unaware of the proprieties of dressing, being clothed all the time probably seems more like a guideline, anyway. Even when the two of you are curled up in each other’s silence, he’s still prone to disentangling himself from you and you’ll find him sitting crossed legged by the ocean. And whether he puts pants on to do that is fifty-fifty at best.

Again, there’s a lot about him that you’re not ready to think about, yet.

You pull out one of the flasks of purified water and a fresh packet of cleansing absorbents. Ideally, you’d have access to a full ablution block where you could put him under the water cascade and then in the ablution trap. As it is, you gently soak the first absorbent in just enough water, which is cold against your palm.

You decide to get off most of the violet before you attend to the delicate work of cleaning out his wounds. It’s mostly splattered and smeared along his chest and ribs, though some of it landed elsewhere on his face and stomach and thighs.

“So, what happened?” you ask. Gamzee shivers when the sponge touches him. He’s so thin, he can feel the wet chill.

“He all motherfucking came at me. I don’t got the knowing if he was one of them or not. But.” He pauses, then, as you remove a thick swipe of the seadweller’s blood from his sternum.

“But?”

“I don’t know if it’s any motherfucking different. They up and come one motherfucking way or another.”

You definitely know what he’s talking about. Sometimes, they knew your blood color, sometimes it was something else entirely. For you, it’s habit to know and counteract motives, though. As far as Gamzee is concerned, they just up and come at him.

There’s a wide gash just beneath the arc of his prominent ribcage. He grins and bears it in a way that makes you cringe. You take a clean absorbent and draw it along beneath that, where the seadweller blood continues to congeal, both on the flat of his stomach and along the ridges of his bones. He shivers and you consider highblood ease.

“Did he say anything?” You’ve reached his hipbones and you’ve got a sad little pile of soaked absorbents, now.

“No. They’ve not always gonna be motherfucking saying anything, bro.” You guess not. “Sometimes, they’re all being to get words in your motherfucking hearducts. Other times, they’re all just motherfucking coming at you. This time, though, there’s a particular reason other than what’s just all being about me not being a fishbro.”

“Yeah, I guess,” you reply. You suppose, if you worked on it, you could find satisfaction in being targeted for something you meant to do. A strange little well of spite bubbles inside you and it’s considerably different from being a pariah by dint of being alive. You freeze it and keep it.

You’ve managed to clean off the blood for the most part. His skin is shiny-wet and nothing smears into the cuts.

“So, what did he do?” you say, wiping your cold, clammy hands clean. You want them to be fresh to tackle his wounds, now. “What exactly did he do, I mean? How did he attack?”

Gamzee shrugs and settles back. You take inventory of his cuts – there’s a long one just beneath his collarbone, the one under the curve of his ribs looks to be pretty deep, and you think that one might need extra care. There are also fairly light scores on the right side of his ribs, now that you can see better. There are rents on his arms and thighs, too, where the seadweller had grabbed at his limbs. There are some things you should talk about more than you do but the thought just rounds nauseously in your stomach.

“I don’t motherfucking remember the details. Like that’s not a thing I’m being to remember with all its precision on, but, he just kinda came out and grabbed at me.”

You take a clean absorbent and start dabbing around the outsides of his cuts. The one across the top seems to have stopped bleeding and you think that it’ll heal pretty quickly. It was probably just a nick in the seadweller’s grab and not a calculated attack, despite its proximity to the throat. Either that or, in the commotion, it was a missed aim but, then, there must have been something that kept the seadweller off guard so that it wasn’t a deeper wound.

“You don’t know where he grabbed for, first?” It was by the arm and then he was spun round, you think.

“My head was all motherfucking soft from our jamming, but I guess he made a move to be getting at my motherfucking arm.” Didn’t begin with a killing blow. You swallow against something.

“So he wanted to pull you closer?” The conversation and beginning to pat at Gamzee’s deepest wound feel somewhat alike.

The wound is too much of Gamzee than you really want to see, offering you layers of fat and offal and a glimpse of bone. You’re also surprised he has any fat there to look at, though. When you touch it – and you don’t touch it, inside – Gamzee goes a little more rigid than his usual looseness.

“Uuugh, yeah.” His voice shakes more than usual as you wipe at the purple ooze. “He pulled me up close, his claws all motherfucking sharp.”

“Didn’t motherfucking say much, though, ‘cause I got to all swinging my elbow into his face.” That is oddly settling. You’ve gone through two absorbents on this wound, now.

“But there was more than that,” you add. And that’s not so settling. Now that Gamzee’s stomach wound is clean, it does look like you’ll have to close it, yourself. You poke around for the first aid kit and pull out the mechanism that will keep the wound shut and from bleeding. It’s something you like to have on your person.

Gamzee eyes it, unwary from the way that his teeth press a little too hard against his lower lip. “What the motherfuck is that?”

“It’ll keep your stomach wound closed.” He continues to eye it with uncertainty. “It’s safe, Gamzee. You must have seen one, before.”

He meets your eyes. “Nah, I just got some bandage on until the motherfucking bleeding all stopped.” You almost drop the mechanism. That’s a pang that you did not need.

Carefully, you concentrate on the mechanism. It fits neatly in your hand and, with your thumb, you press a button on the side and let the paste rise to the surface. It’s viscous and clear and will just be a purple thread across Gamzee’s chest when it works. “But he got you again?”

Gamzee nods and you touch the fluid to the inside lines of his wound. He freezes just on the edge of his sentence and you watch him arch his back and squeeze his eyes shut, instead. You carry on drawing the paste, carefully, and resist stopping to rub his arm or stroke his face.

“Ssssssssshhhhhhh,” you whisper. Gamzee’s fingers twitch and scrabble against the floor. “Hey, you didn’t have such a problem with almost being eviscerated out there.”

“Some stuff is all to hurting worse,” he says, his voice strained but more level, now that you’ve moved away. Well, as level as it ever is. The paste in his wound congeals and creates a film as it knits shut.

You decide to tackle his legs, next, and then you can move onto his arms and finish off on the relatively easy rib scratches.

“Yeah, he was being to pull me back and, yeah, brother, he up and grabbed anything he could.” Most of the scratches are around the outsides of his thighs. You’re back to just needing moisture absorbents again as you dab at them. They’re pretty easy to clean.  One of the seadweller’s claws scored across his inner thigh.

“You fell forward.” Gamzee parts his legs a little to offer you access to the last cut. It’s a little way down from the crease of his sheath.

“Yeah, and then the motherfucker had me pinned.” You actually make good work of the scratch pretty quickly. “All grinning down at me, holding a motherfucking blade. Guess he wanted to take shit real slow.”

Something curdles inside you and your movements slow down, the loose absorbent water beginning to trail purplish water on his skin.

“I managed to all be flipping him back round, though,” Gamzee rambles on.

“And that’s why you have scratches on your legs?” You take another absorbent from the packet and give the scratch one last wipe over.

“Yeah. He had these big motherfucking horns, though, so I got my grab on of them and pulled ‘til his shoulderstub tore straight across.” Like it was a thing that needed doing, which it was, you guess. Seadweller or not. “But not until his motherfucking blade got in me.”

He pointed at his middle. You nod.

“Could have been a lot fucking worse, I guess,” you say. “But, Gamzee, make sure to put on some goddamn pants next time you go outside, okay?”

He gives you a vague smile in return.


End file.
